Today, whoever is responsible for football blogging collective In Bed With Maradona’s Twitter feed were irresponsibly wrong. Given that this is the internet, someone had to correct them.

This afternoon I was on Twitter, because my life is just a series of vacant spaces between meals and sleeping. Unfortunately, so were In Bed With Maradona, and they obviously felt the need to say something(s) stupid.

The gist of it was expressed in three tweets that I’ve put below, because I hate typing:

So basically, a very non-specific complaint, a sentence that doesn’t really mean anything (blogging ate itself?) and then a demand that other people make the changes they want, when they, due to the large number of bloggers that write for them, and their relatively large reach, means that they are surely the best placed of anyone to instigate such a change: Just add a new category on the site (I don’t know, nail clippings of the 1954 Burnley team) and let people go mental.

But of course, it doesn’t end there:

This is probably the worst of the lot: A condemnation of both “generic” club sites, and blogs who chase hits by writing about possible transfers. It’s very easy for a site with nearly 15’000 Twitter followers to bemoan sites trying to scrape together a few more hits by writing about current possible happenings. Unfortunately, the very nature of football blogging, that every blog needs a successful Twitter account to generate enough hits to make it seem worthwhile, means that it is very hard for those who haven’t got the time or equipment to do a running commentary on what everyone else is doing to get their website seen.

IBWM then went on to promote a couple of sites that had been suggested and they presumably found acceptable. These included: one consisting solely of pictures of players in their underwear, very detailed and factual histories of Spanish football stadiums, and someone taking pictures of random people in football shirts. Now there’s nothing wrong with people writing these, and I’m glad they exist (well, the stadiums one. I can take or leave Siem de Jong baring his pants), but to suggest that they are in any way ‘better’ than club blogs is first class shit.

If someone thinks they can do a better job at a club site than those available at the moment, or wants to write about transfer speculation, why shouldn’t they?

IBWM also seem to have a problem with the word generic, which in this case apparently means “stuff we don’t like”, as they go on to except Leazes Terrace and Roker Report from the generic club site tag, despite both basically (just) being exceptionally well written and very good club sites. Looking over them briefly, the only article that seems in any way non-generic (i.e. not either specifically about the club or the Premier League) is a piece on Leazes Terrace about Kevin Keegan artwork, so it basically just seems to be a rehash of 2011’s Football Blogging Community thing all over again.

Which is brilliant, because the only other bloggers who have been in any way helpful or nice to Goalposts for Goalposts are the people at Surreal Football, who were the enemy in that particular debate/fuckfest, and Scott at thefootyblog.net, the only place I’d ever willingly read about Scottish football.

Fortunately I’m not really too bothered any more as I’m crippled by a lack of patience, interesting one liners for Twitter and any sort of good articles (except this one, which was quality, and Ben’s which are far above mine), and I only write because I enjoy introducing myself as a writer in pretentious wine bars and love reading my own stuff.

But I am sick of people saying writing about football that actually happened when they were alive or more than three people have heard of is in any way intellectually or morally inferior, because it isn’t. It just means you don’t have completely twattish opinions.

Following this, IBWM’s Jeff was very apologetic, which as he’s a Newcastle supporter means he’s golden. Unfortunately there’s still a bunch of stupidly illusioned people trying to defend his rant. From this, we can conclude that a significant number of football bloggers are at best blissfully ignorant and at worse wilfully stupid. To the Tweeting morons who said there was “mileage” in what he said, or that I hadn’t “read it as it was”, you clearly haven’t read the above, and if you have and still hold that view then I hope you never bang your head for fear that you’ll damage the last two brain cells you clearly can’t afford to lose.

5 Responses to The problem with people, specifically bloggers

Good response to the tweets. I’m a big fan of what IBWM does, but they went too far with their apparent dislike of ‘mainstream football’. People can write about what they want to write about. If they want to do stuff about the history of football and so on, go for it. I want to discuss Robin van Persie, Cesc Fabregas and Arsene Wenger. So I will. There’s no need for a complete overhaul of football discussion on the internet, and if IBWM think there is, they can do it themselves, not insist that everyone else should, regardless of their feelings towards the issue.

Thanks, that’s exactly it. If they want to write about the friendly rivalry of Ethiopia and Guyana they’re welcome to, but not a chance do they get to tell other people what they should(n’t) write/read.

A very good piece, very well written and bang on the money
Hands up, what was meant to be a call to inspire legions of good sites further came out all wrong and sounded, well, shit. Unforgivable and not what I or IBWM stand for. Social media is a great tool, but fuck it up and it bites back.

On the positive side , I’ve discovered this site, another first class example. Keep it up and good luck.